English language resources

The Academic Word List is a collection of words that have been identified as being very common in academic writing. It has been identified from a corpus of more than 3,500,000 words of academic text. A detailed definition—and access to the list—is available at English Vocabulary Exercises. The lists include a wide range of interactive exercises to practice your English.

Queen Mary, University of London has a very useful resource called Academic English Online. It covers areas such as:

Academic writing

Academic reading

Academic speaking

Grammar

These are mainly aimed at students who are studying in English as a foreign or second language, though the advice on structural aspects of organisation and logical argument is often just as relevant to students whose first language is English.

The Academic Phrasebank at The University of Manchester provides an extensive list of phrases and expressions that can be used in essays, reports and other documents.

Many of the idioms and quotations used here are very useful for conversation and discussion, but be careful with their use in written English. Idioms and general quotations are not common in academic writing.

BBC Learning English has a collection of useful collection of language oriented news reports and exercises. These range from lower intermediate to advanced levels and are very useful for developing language related to current affairs and specific issues.

Language Resource Centre

Aberystwyth University's Language Resources Centre (B Floor, Hugh Owen) contains a wide range of online activities. All of these can be used in the Language Resource Centre when it is not being used for classes.

Lab 1 open 24 hours (card access)

Lab2 contains books and printed resources for a number of the exercises linked below (do not remove books from the Lab)

Language Exchange Platform

The Department of Lifelong Learning offers Modern Languages courses in Arabic, Breton, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. You can study these separately from your degree.

In addition to these course you can participate in the Language Exchange Platform. This is a tandem learning programme where you work with a person from another country, or who speaks the language you want to learn. In exchange you help that person with your own language, or the language she or he wants to learn. Follow the link above to find out more and to participate.